


separate circles in a crowded hall

by etben



Category: The Half of It (2020)
Genre: College, Epistolary, F/F, Texting, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:14:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28115997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etben/pseuds/etben
Summary: Ellie and Aster stay in touch, afterwards.
Relationships: Ellie Chu/Aster Flores
Comments: 19
Kudos: 68
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	separate circles in a crowded hall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [caughtinanocean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/caughtinanocean/gifts).



> caughtinanocean, thank you so much for the excuse to write for this fandom!
> 
> Thanks to [Redacted] for alpha-reading and laughing at my jokes, to [Redacted] for helping me with the ending, and to [Redacted] for being my partner in Yuletide suffering.

**SUMMER:**

_Wenatchee, Washington: Apple Capital of the World!_

Someone has vandalized the sign, scratching out the letter P and scribbling in SSHO. Ellie can understand the impulse, honestly: she rode past the Squahamish town sign twice a day for four years, and considered annotating it almost every single time. _Shit’s Happening in Squahamish_ , maybe, but that’s ambiguous; _Bullshit’s Happening_ , but there isn’t enough space on the sign.

The train whistle blows, and Ellie props her phone against the window to take a picture before it starts moving again. She checks the image—blurry, but still legible—and switches to Ghost Message. Spends a long time with her thumb hovering over the second message thread, then sighs and opens the first one. Under the emojis—and fine, the caterpillar does look smart, but what does it _mean?_ —she types _but how do they tell?_ , adds the picture, hits ‘send’.

 _oh ive been there_ , Paul sends back, less than a minute later. _theres a really good burger place rite by the highway._

_Any taco sausages?_

_not yet!!_ The string of emojis that follow is bewildering: a pineapple, a duck, a dancing lady. Ellie shakes her head and tucks her phone back into her pocket, leaning against the window as the train lurches into motion.

Ten minutes later, she shakes her head and pulls her phone back out. She pulls up the second message thread, inactive for almost six months now. Takes a deep breath. Types _I have some methodological questions_ , attaches the photo, sends the message.

She doesn’t wait for a response, doesn’t even check to make sure the message sent properly, just thumbs the screen off and tucks the phone under her thigh. The train is getting back up to speed as they pull out of town, and soon the view out the window is mostly trees, pine and spruce and hemlock blurring together in a wall of stately green. Here and there, the trees cut away, revealing glimpses of small-town life that make Ellie’s teeth ache with recognition: a white clapboard church, a backyard, a weathered red barn.

The fourth time she finds herself pulling her phone out to glance at the screen, she rolls her eyes at herself: _Not subtle, Ellie Chu_. Fortunately, she’s got a backpack full of books: mostly old favorites, with a few of Mrs. Geselschap’s recommendations. 

(“The school committee won’t let me assign any of these,” she’d said, thumping a paper bag down onto Ellie’s desk on the last day of class. “Not even for AP Lit. Cowards.”

“You know you can’t assign me anything now, right?” Ellie had said, fiddling with a rip near the handle of the bag. “I’m done.”

“You’re never done reading,” Mrs. Geselschap had said. “Take the damn books.”

Ellie took the damn books.)

The train rumbles on. Ellie hesitates, then pulls _Maurice_ out of the stack, dropping her phone into the bag and zipping it shut firmly. Who needs a phone when there’s repressed British gays?

She doesn’t look up until they’re rolling into Spokane, surfacing from the book with a jolt like a missing stair, like the dream of falling that sends you hurtling into consciousness. When she checks the time, she almost can’t parse the notification, familiar and startling all at once.

 **DiegaRivero:** _Hmmm._ _Is it per capita, or is there some kind of rating scale?_

Oh, _screw_ the repressed British gays.

***

**FALL:**

They text more, after that. Aster shares a story about Father McGillicuddy’s latest incoherent ranting; Ellie counters with pictures of her roommate’s increasingly bizarre wardrobe choices.

(“I want to be clear that I’m wearing this _ironically_ ,” Jenna said, after they stumbled home from the Freshman Welcome Bash to confront the half-unpacked battlezone of their room. “Like, obviously the _actual_ nineteen-fifties were—” she paused in the process of rolling down her stockings to gesture vaguely. “You know?”

“Um.” Ellie blinked. “A seething morass of racism and paranoia?”

“I was going to say _super fucked up_ , but yeah, basically.” Jenna tilted her head. “Basically I’m doing, like—an homage to the monstrous feminine, kind of? Like, the misery of ambition as curtailed by the pressures of working motherhood.” She kicked off the stocking and wiggled her toes. Her nail polish was navy blue with sparkles, chipped and incongruous against the carefully-pressed perfection of her dress, the elegant twist of her hair. “If that makes any sense?”

“So like... _The Stepford Wives_ , basically?”

“Exactly!” Jenna’s whole face creased in a grin, broad and unashamed. “God, it’s so nice to be around people who _get it_.”

Ellie wasn’t entirely sure that she _did_ , actually; Jenna’s suitcases were a riot of fabric with a frankly terrifying number of ruffles. Still—

“I was listening to a podcast on the way out here,” she offered, sitting down on her bed as Jenna wriggled out of her dress. “About the invention of the Pill and how it influenced women’s lives.” She bit her lip. “I’ll send you the link, if you want.”

“Ooh, would you?”)

 _She sounds great_ , Aster sends, late on a Thursday night. _I’m glad you’re getting along_.

Which—it isn’t wrong, is the thing. Jenna’s funny in a high-octane sort of way, talking a mile a minute, always quick with a joke or a snappy comeback. She has _way_ too many clothes, but she keeps them all to her side of the closet, neatly pressed skirts and blouses hanging in amiable confusion next to Ellie’s flannels, like guests who misread the dress code but feel awkward leaving the party. She gets up at 6 am every day to go for a run— _ew_ —but she always makes sure to set out her outfit the night before so that she doesn’t wake Ellie up. 

They’re not going to be best friends, but it’s—okay. Fine. Better than fine, really. Ellie turns sideways on the battered couch in the common room, tucking her feet up under her body.

 _It’s great_ , she types. _Although I have to say, sometimes I miss_

“Ellie!” Jenna explodes into the room, barely catching herself on the doorframe with one elegantly-manicured hand. “Ellie, the Theater Collective is doing a choose-your-own-adventure play on the quad. Wanna come?” She holds up a flask in one hand, wiggles it temptingly. “I hear it’s _Carmen Sandiego_ -themed…”

“Nah, go ahead,” Ellie says. An audience-directed play led by a crowd of inebriated college students sounds...interesting, actually, but not what she wants right now. “I’m good here.”

“You sure?”

“I—yeah.” 

Jenna shrugs. “Suit yourself.” She uncaps the flask and takes a swig, then proffers it again. “Oh, but Sasha’s girlfriend’s roommate gave me some fancy gin, you want a bit?”

“Sure, why not.” Ellie drains her glass of water and holds it out to Jenna, who pours a hefty slug of clear liquid into it. “Thanks.”

“No problem. Have fun!” Jenna pivots neatly, skirt flaring out around her knees, and disappears out the door, barely sparing a glance over her shoulder at Ellie.

Ellie holds the glass up and gives it a dubious sniff. Jenna drinks mostly gin, and Ellie’s getting used to the crisp, herbaceous smell, but the taste—she takes a sip and grimaces. Pine trees, _euch_. Still, it burns nicely down her throat, curling warmly in her stomach, so she wrinkles her nose and downs the rest of it.

Her phone vibrates in her hand, the muted buzz startlingly loud in the empty room. When she looks down, there’s a notification from Ghost Message.

 **DiegaRivero:** _You miss...? Surely not Squahamish…_

“Fuck.” Her thumb must have slipped when Jenna exploded into the room, sending the message before she could edit it. _No_ , Ellie sends back, but something—the whisper of the bushes against the window, maybe, or the hum of the radiator—makes her follow it with _not exactly._

There’s a pause before Aster’s response, ellipses flickering in and out of view like a reluctant lightbulb, but eventually it arrives.

 **DiegaRivero:** _So what, exactly?_

Ellie sags back into the couch, letting her head flop back against the creaking leather cushions. Objectively speaking, she misses exactly nothing about Squahamish _qua_ Squahamish: she misses her dad, sure, and Paul, but neither of them necessarily belong to Squahamish. Paul’s meeting with restaurant critics a few times a month, now, and even her dad has made vague noises about moving east once Ellie finishes college and lands somewhere in a more permanent way.

She misses Aster too, sometimes, when she lets herself. Or maybe not Aster, precisely: maybe just the _idea_ of Aster, Aster _in potentia_. But anyway, Aster’s putting a portfolio together for art schools, Ellie knows; it might take her a while, but she’ll get free.

Other than that, though, there’s really nothing in Squahamish that Ellie cares about. There’s a few people she wouldn’t hate seeing again—Geselschap, a few other teachers, Hannah-from-Chorus and a handful of her least obnoxious essay clients—but as far as Ellie Chu is concerned, the town of Squahamish can fall into the Cascadia Subduction Zone any day now.

And yet—Ellie gnaws on the inside of her cheek, sucking the lingering sting of gin from her teeth. Types out a response to Aster’s message without really looking at the screen, feeling her way through the words.

 **SmithCorona:** _You know the way the sky looks, just before dawn? The way the light rolls down the mountains, like sap down the side of a tree? Stuff like that._

 **DiegaRivero:** _And they don’t have trees or mountains in Iowa? 🤔_

Ellie snorts.

 **SmithCorona:** _The highest point in the entire state is less than 2000 feet above sea level_ . There was a trip out there as part of Orientation Week; Ellie didn’t go, but she read the informational flier. _Anyway,_ she adds, _I don’t really miss Squahamish_.

 **DiegaRivero:** _But you miss something?_

In another life, this is flirting: Aster casting out a line, laying a trail for Ellie to follow. In another life, Ellie takes the bait, parrying Aster’s coy nothings with carefully-phrased wordplay. They banter, light and easy over jagged edges, pretending that this is all they are: a shimmer of heat, a flash in the pan. Aster sends a picture, maybe, a play at nonchalance, making sure to light the line of her shoulder just _so_ ; Ellie bites her lip and retypes her compliments a thousand times, straining to find the words to make Aster’s cheeks flush.

Ellie can see that life, unfurling with crystal clarity. It’s a decent one, on the whole—messy, later, for sure, but not without its charms.

In this life, though, she’s tired and achy and a tiny bit drunk, listening to the off-key whistle of the wind in the trees outside and longing for a place she doesn’t even _like_ that much. Staring into the dark of the window, she types out her answer.

 **SmithCorona:** _I knew who I was, in Squahamish._ She laughs, dry and scraped-bare _. I mean, I hated it, but at least I knew_.

 **DiegaRivero:** _Yeah. I get that._

She doesn’t seem to want to say more, and to be honest, Ellie doesn’t want to hear it. Grinnell is amazing, is the thing—challenging and exciting, pushing her in ways that Squahamish never did, never _could_. She loves every inch of it, from the flat expanse of the cornfields to the minutiae of her course readings.

It’s just—it’s hard, sometimes, Ellie sets the silent phone on the table and picks up the remote for the lounge TV, turning it on and flipping through the channels. Ad, ad, weather report, ad, and then a flash of grainy film stops her restless thumb: Audrey Hepburn, in black gloves and pearls, smoking a cigarette with a beautifully self-conscious insouciance. Ellie tosses the remote back onto the table and curls her feet underneath her body, tipping on her side to watch Holly Golightly make a beautiful mess of her life.

After a moment, though, her phone buzzes again. From her place on the couch, Ellie can just make out the Ghost Message logo; she debates not answering, but winds up leaning forward enough to grab her phone and read the message.

 **DiegaRivero:** _I think this is where I’m supposed to say that it gets easier, but…_

Aster moved, too, Ellie remembers: Sacramento to Squahamish. Probably a downgrade by most standards.

 **SmithCorona:** _Well, let me know when you get there._

 **DiegaRivero:** _Sure thing._

***

**WINTER:**

“It’s just, like—” Ellie ducks around a kissing couple and out the back door, into the brittle chill of the night air. “I fucking _hated_ Squahamish, right?”

“So you’ve said.” Aster’s voice is dry as old paper, hermetically sealed in carefully climate-controlled boxes. “At length.”

“Right, so, like—this is better! Objectively, this is _so_ much better.” She nods to Karlie-from-Early-Modern-Lit, smoking by the back fence with a gaggle of aggressively fashionable people in tight jeans and minimal shirts, all of them shivering in the cold of an Iowa winter. “I mean,” Ellie continues, ducking around the side of the house, “okay, the food isn’t great—”

“No taco sausage?”

“—but other than that, everything ought to be copacetic, you know?” Aster hmms, low and amused; Ellie takes it as agreement. “But instead— _instead_ —it’s, like—fuck, what’s the word I mean?” She stumbles up against an immovable obstacle and stops, blinking, caught between the Scylla of her linguistic lacuna and the Charybdis of the side gate.

“Nope-acetic?”

“...that’s funny,” Ellie says. “That’s really funny; can I use that? I’m gonna use that. Hah!” The gate swings open with a gratifyingly solid _click_ and Ellie emerges victorious into the dingy alley next to the house. “I’m out!”

“Mmhmm.” Aster’s voice is so nice; Ellie presses her ear against the phone to hear it more clearly. “And just out of curiosity, _out_ right now would be—”

“It’s just, like—like, I have to create my whole personality from first principles now, you know?” The icy air feels nice, cool against her flushed cheeks as she makes her way down the shockingly uneven sidewalk towards the dorms.

“Ellie—”

“And obviously that’s _fine_ , it’s not like I mind,” Ellie continues. “It’s a great opportunity, really, when you think about it.”

“Ellie, can you just—”

“But it’s a lot more work than you’d think,” she says plaintively, “being a whole new person. Oh, I’m going to throw up now.” Aster says something—Ellie’s name, probably; she’s been saying that a lot, this evening—but Ellie is busy vomiting profusely into a decorative hedge. She holds the phone away from her ear while she does it, to be polite, distance reducing Aster’s voice to a tinny blur. “Sorry,” Ellie says, once her stomach stops turning inside out. “What were you saying?”

“Ellie—” Aster sighs, mutters something under her breath that Ellie can’t quite make out. “Can you tell me where you are right now?”

“I’m, uh.” Ellie blinks, looks around. “I’m on the sidewalk?” She turns away from the wall of shrubbery she’s been abusing and spots a bench, sinking into it with a sign of relief. “And now I’m on a bench.”

“Oh my _fucking_ —” Aster’s breathing is loud over the phone, harsh and angular in a way she never used to let it be, before. It’s raw and beautiful, like the barren vistas Ellie saw as the train barrelled through Montana: rocks and sky and scrubby, twisting trees.

“I like your voice,” she tells Aster. “It’s like—Montana.”

“It’s—what? Never mind,” Aster says. “Is there anyone else there with you?”

“Uhh.” Ellie leans forward, craning her neck to look up and down the road. “No?” As she says it, though, a familiar figure swims into view, dark hair gleaming in the glow of the streetlamps. “Oh, wait, there’s Mac...kenzie? Makayla?” It’s one of those terrible names, but Mac—she goes by Mac—is actually pretty cool. “She has a mohawk,” Ellie tells Aster. “It was blue last week, but now it’s—hey, Mac, what color is your hair now?”

“Purple,” Mac says, “for the moment.” She leans against a street lamp and crosses her arms over her chest, raising one eyebrow. “You okay, Ellie?”

“I,” Ellie announces grandly, “am completely nope-acetic. Wait.” She blinks, rolling the words around in her mouth. “Wait, no, that’s—no, hang on, I meant—” She frowns. “Aster, what did I mean?”

“Ellie.” Aster sounds very tired, which doesn’t make sense; it’s two hours earlier back in Squahamish. “Ellie, can I talk to your friend for a second?”

“Mac’s not my friend.” Mac raises her other eyebrow, and Ellie waves her hand in apology. “I mean, I wish she were! She’s really cool! She told professor Dupont that he was full of neo-imperialist shit last week. It was awesome,” Ellie says, remembering. “His moustache did, like a whole _thing_ about it. But we’re not friends yet.”

“Okay, well, can I talk to her anyway?”

“Hang on,” Ellie says. “Let me check.” She holds the phone to her shoulder and looks up at Mac. “Aster wants to talk to you. She didn’t specify a topic, though.” Ellie frowns. “If she wants to date you, that’s okay I guess. I can help you study.”

“Oh...kay?” Mac pulls the phone from Ellie’s hand and lifts it to her ear, both eyebrows still arched in bemusement. “Hiya, Aster—is it Aster, or Ester?” She nods in satisfaction. “Great, okay, so, listen: Ellie’s—” A pause, then Mac laughs. “Pretty much, yeah.” Another pause. “No, we’re not far from the dorm—you live in Younker, right?”

“No, Aster lives in Sqahamish,” Ellie volunteers. “I live in Younker, though.”

“ _Oh_ boy,” Mac says. “But yeah, it’s just a couple of blocks from here, I can make sure that she—mhmm. Mhmm. Sure thing. You want to talk to her?” She laughs again. “Fair enough.” She hands the phone out to Ellie, then tilts her head thoughtfully. “If I give this to you, are you going to be able to hold on to it?”

“Yes,” Ellie says, bristling. “I’m _drunk,_ not incontinent. Wait, no—” Ellie pokes at her mouth, trying to push the muscles into alignment. “Incongruent. Incognizant?” She blinks up at Mac. “I can handle my _phone_.”

“I believe you, kiddo,” Mac says, “but what do you say I hold onto it for now anyway? Just until we get you back to your room.” She leans forward and slides an arm around Ellie’s back, tugging her off the bench and to a distinctly precarious standing posture.

“Whoa,” Ellie says. “You’re incredibly strong.” She reaches up with one hand to poke tentatively at the line of Mac’s forearm, currently anchoring Ellie’s waist in the material plane. “Your arms are like... _arms._ ”

“Thanks, I think, ” Mac says. “And now we’re just gonna walk you back to your dorm, nice and slow, there we go, one foot after the other, just like that.”

They walk like that for a while, Mac’s arm warm and steady around Ellie’s side. The moon is up, hanging low and ripe over the line of neat little houses, bare tree branches splintering it like broken glass.

“The moon’s nice tonight,” Ellie says. 

“It is, yeah.” Mac holds up a dark, cloth-wrapped bundle. “I came out to take some pictures.”

“Oh!” Mac does that, Ellie remembers: visual art, mostly photography, some collages. It’s good work, as far as Ellie’s qualified to judge: simple but not straightforward, with titles that make you rethink the entire piece. Complex. Sophisticated. “Well, if you want to date Aster, that’s okay.” She tilts her head to the side. “You’d be good together, I think,” she adds, because they would. Bold strokes.

Mac laughs. “I’m not looking to date anybody right now,” she says. “And no offense, but even if I were, it wouldn’t be your ex-girlfriend.”

“No, I told you, she’s not my ex-girlfriend,” Ellie says. “Or—” She frowns. “I guess maybe I’m her ex-boyfriend, a little bit?”

“Um—”

“But it was under false pretenses, so I don’t think it counts.”

“...on the one hand, I don’t want to ask,” Mac says. Her voice is quiet, thoughtful, the way it is when she wakes up in the middle of class to ask a question that makes Professor Dupont’s mustache vibrate with anger. “But on the other hand, I _really_ want to know.”

“Paul was dating her,” Ellie explains. “Not me.”

“Paul?”

“He’s my friend,” Ellie says. “Now, I mean. He’s tall and he plays football and he’s, like—honestly too nice to be real. And he invented taco sausage!”

“Taco...sausage?”

“I know it sounds like a really unsubtle euphemism—” and it really _does_ ; Ellie’s convinced that a solid 83% of Paul’s marketing difficulties can be traced back to the fact that his product sounds like it was named by a particularly puerile 7th grader “—but it’s actually really good.”

“I will take your word for that.”

“Anyway, _he_ dated Aster, not me,” Ellie says. “Only he’s not the best at—talking—so he asked me for help.”

“And you helped him...talk to the girl you had a crush on?”

“ _No_.” Ellie rolls her eyes. “I helped him write a _letter_.” She frowns, thinking. “And then I helped text her. And then he kissed me? And then Trig proposed, and I yelled at him in church—”

“Wait, Trig?”

“—and _then_ I kissed Aster. And then I came to Iowa.”

“Oh, of course,” Mac says. “My mistake. Hey, do you have your keys?”

“My—” Ellie pats at her pockets until one of them jingles promisingly. “I think so?” When Mac doesn’t answer, Ellie looks up at her and realizes, “Oh, hey, we’re here!”

“We sure are,” Mac agrees calmly. “Now, do you think you could—oh, Sam, hey, thanks.”

“No problem,” says Tall Sam. “You two okay?”

“We should be fine, yeah,” Mac says. “Although, if you could hold the door for just a second…”

“Sure thing,” Tall Sam says, and holds the door for them. “After you!”

“You’re very helpful,” Ellie tells him. “I think I’m going to call you Helpful Sam from now on.” Still Tall But More Importantly Helpful Sam gives her a thumbs up and disappears out into the night.

“Okay, now, what room are you?”

It takes them a while to get to Ellie’s room—she knows all the digits, she just can’t make them come out in the right order—but eventually Mac is opening the correct door and steering them into Ellie’s room.

“We’re here!” Ellie collapses onto her bed, suddenly feeling like all of her muscles have been replaced with whatever they use to make those lead vests at the dentist’s office. Lead, probably. “Wait, how come you have a key to my room?”

“It’s your key, Ellie.” Mac holds it up.

“ _Oh_ ,” Ellie says, shaping her mouth into an approximation of recognition even though the key mostly looks like a wobbly, sparkly blur. “Oh,” she says again, as the room starts to tilt sideways, “I think I’m going to go to sleep now.”

And the rest, as the poets say, is darkness.

(When Ellie wakes up, there’s a bottle of All-Sport on the floor next to her bed, along with a bottle of Ibuprofen. She shakes a few of the latter into her hand and downs them with half of the former, then rolls over and shuts her eyes.

The second time she wakes up, her head is throbbing ominously, but she feels mostly human. She drinks the last of the All-Sport, lukewarm now, and can practically feel her tissues rehydrating. When she finally straggles to her feet, something crinkles under her toes—a fold of paper with ELLIE CHU written in neat block capitals.

 _TAKE IT EASY TODAY_ , the note says. _AND CALL YOUR NOT-EX NOT-GIRLFRIEND.)_

***

**SPRING:**

“Right, sure, but then if you look at _On the Waterfront—”_

“Ellie. Ellie, hey.” Tabitha pokes her in the shoulder until Ellie turns. “Somebody’s triple-texting you.” On the coffee table, Ellie’s phone buzzes again, and Tabitha smirks. “ _Quadruple_ texting you, sorry.”

“Ooooooh, _Ellie_.” Silvia swoons dramatically back into the armchair, flinging one hand across her forehead and fanning herself with the other. “What a _scandal_.” On the floor next to her, Noel laughs so hard they almost choke, bending over and coughing furiously into their knees.

“Your attempts at humor are noted and dismissed,” Ellie says, leaning forward to reach for her phone. It’s just far enough away that she can’t quite reach it; her grasping fingertips only serve to knock it further across the table. “Fuck, can someone—”

“Here.” Lucas pushes the phone into her grip with a sympathetic smile.

“Thank you,” Ellie tells him. “You’re a gentleman and a scholar, and my only true friend in this wretched hive of scum and villainy.” A chorus of boos and razzes rises from the rest of the Grinnell Cinema Club, sprawled out across the common room, but Lucas just frowns, his bushy eyebrows drawing together thoughtfully.

“Be careful, Ellie,” he says, folding his hand over hers. “It might be one of those—” He draws out the pause just long enough that Ellie can see what’s coming—

“—oh my god, oh my _God_ , Lucas, please, don't, I’m _begging_ you—”

“—one of those _sexual text messages_.”

—but not long enough for her to reach across the table and throttle him, more’s the pity. Honestly, you try to speak correctly, and what does it get you? Disrespect. _Mockery._

“Can I have my phone now, please? And my hands?” Lucas relinquishes both with a grin that Ellie can only categorize as ‘shit-eating’. “I’m going to take this in private,” she says, squirming out of the depths of the couch and tucking her phone firmly into her pocket. “Since apparently _none_ of you can be trusted.”

“Awwwww, Ellster, you know you love us.” Silvia pillows her head on her hands and flutters her eyelashes outrageously. “We’re your _friends_.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Indisputable,” Silvia agrees, as Ellie makes her way toward the door. “But note if you will, comrades, the suspicious _lack_ of a denial!”

Ellie rolls her eyes and lets the door swing shut behind her, muffling the chorus of laughter and shouts. Alone in the relative peace of the hallway, she leans against the door and pulls her phone back out.

 **Paul:** _omg ellie did you hear???_

 **Paul:** _probably not so i’ll tell you_

 **Paul:** _aster got in 2 art school!!_

 **Paul:** _in chicago!!!_

Ellie swallows down the cramped, hollow bubble of emotion that rises to fill her throat and taps out a response.

 **Ellie:** _That’s so great! Tell her congratulations!_

Paul’s answer is instantaneous, as per usual, and triple-texted, also as per usual.

 **Paul:** _right???_

 **Paul:** _idk though_

 **Paul:** _she seems kind of bummed_

Ellie sends back a single question mark.

 **Paul:** _idk_

 **Paul:** _she didnt say anything to me about it?_

 **Paul:** _i only know bc she wuz fighting about it w her dad when i went by the church_

Ellie bites her lip, thumbs hesitating over the screen. Before she can put the words together, Paul’s sending another message.

 **Paul:** _you should call her_

 **Paul:** _i think shed like to talk to someone smart rite now_

The response barely even merits conscious thought.

 **Ellie:** _Yet again, let me repeat: you’re smart, Paul._

He’s stupidly resistant to the idea—even more resistant than Ellie-of-two-years-ago would have been. Still, it’s the long game that matters; Ellie’s wearing him down.

 **Paul:** _haha thanx_

 **Paul:** _sum1 who knows about art stuff tho_

 **Paul:** _and like_

 **Paul:** _foucoh and stuff_

Ellie rolls her eyes.

 **Ellie:** _I *know* you know how to spell Foucault_.

 **Ellie:** _But I’ll check in with her._

She flips over to Ghost Message and pulls up her conversation with Aster, but it feels—wrong, somehow, to drop what she’s going to say under their debate about metacognition and the theater of the absurd. Ellie hesitates, then presses the _other_ icon, the one with three curved lines radiating out of a vaguely human silhouette.

Aster picks up the call on the second ring.

“Ellie, hey.” Her voice is choked and wet-sounding. “What’s up?”

“Nothing much,” Ellie says, scraping her fingernails restlessly against the peeling paint of cinderblocks behind her. “How’s Squahamish?”

“Oh, you know.” Aster takes a shaky breath. “Same liver, different eagles.” She laughs, short and humorless. “Although really, I guess it would be _‘same eagles, different liver_ ’, right? But then, like— _is_ it the same liver?”

“I’ve...never thought about it.” Ellie squeezes her eyes shut, then forces them open. “Aster—”

“Paul told you.” Aster’s voice is flat, resigned.

“Yeah.” Ellie tips her head back against the wall, rocks it gently from side to side. “The Chicago Institute of Art?”

“The Art Institute of Chicago,” Aster corrects her. “But yeah.”

“That’s great,” Ellie tells her, as if it needs saying. “Right? Like, objectively,” she swallows, “that’s a good thing, right?”

“I—” Aster sighs. “Yeah, I guess.” Another laugh, this one bleakly amused. “Try telling my parents that, though.”

“Your dad?”

“I mean, yes,” Aster says, “but weirdly, more my mom?” She sighs. “I don’t know, she’s just—freaking out about me being so far away, I think, mostly? But also—” A pause. Ellie can practically see Aster’s face: the subtle firming of the jaw, the tilt of her eyebrows. “She was a musician, you know?”

“I—no,” Ellie says. “No, I don’t think I knew that.”

“Mmm.” Aster sucks in a breath, loud enough to be audible over the phone. “Oboe, mostly, but she played the clarinet too.” A nearly-audible shrug. “She wasn’t, like, world-class good, but she had a job with an orchestra, before she met my dad.”

“Oh.” No need to lay out the rest of _that_ story; Ellie’s spent enough time with Pastor Flores to know how it goes.

“Yeah.” 

There’s a long pause, the two of them breathing at each other in quiet syncopation. Ellie’s chewing on her lip, trying to find the right words in the right order, when Aster lets out a long, gusty sigh, dry and wheezing over the phone.

“But like—I’m _not_ my mom,” Aster says, “right?”

“You’re not,” Ellie says, immediate and instinctive. Then, thinking about it, “—you’re really, _really_ not.”

“Thanks. And, like—” A pause; Ellie picks at a loose thread on her shirt, a buttonhole losing its coherence. “Just because she married my dad and, like, left all of her dreams behind—”

“You won’t do that.” Ellie’s fingers twist until they’re white, the thread wrapped around them in vehement contrast. “Aster, you _won’t_.”

“Thanks,” Aster says. “It—” She sighs. “It means something, to hear that from you.”

“Well, I mean.” Ellie shakes her hair out of her face, tugs her hand free of the entangling threads. “I _was_ valedictorian.”

“Right,” Aster says, her voice low and amused. “That’s definitely why.”

“Obviously.” Ellie chews on her lip for a moment, then says, “I mean, it’s going to suck, okay?”

“I—”

“Not always,” Ellie adds, “and not, like, irredeemably, but, like—it’s going to suck, kind of.” 

“...thanks,” Aster says slowly. “I guess.” 

Ellie sighs, shakes her head at her own inarticulateness. “But it won’t suck _forever_ , is my point.”

“Ellie Chu.” The sound of laughter bubbling up through Aster Flores’ voice is like sunlight, like fresh-cut grass, like poetry. “Are you honestly trying to ‘it gets better’ me right now?”

“I mean.” Ellie shrugs, knowing that Aster can’t see it. Knowing that Aster will know. “If the shoe fits?”

“Unbelievable,” Aster says, and the word wraps warmly around Ellie’s spine, coils sweetly alongside her organs. “Absolutely unbelievable, Ellie Chu.”

“Thanks,” Ellie says. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

***

SUMMER:

 **DiegaRivero:** _okay so listen_

 **DiegaRivero:** _the first thing you have to understand is that there are TWO streets named Wacker in Chicago_

 **SmithCorona:** ...okay?

 **DiegaRivero:** _and one of them is Upper Wacker_

 **DiegaRivero:** _and one of them is LOWER Wacker  
_

 **SmithCorona:** _Ohhhh boy_

 **SmithCorona:** _I can’t wait to see where_ this _is going_.

**Author's Note:**

> I've never been to Iowa or Washington; apologies for any misrepresentations.


End file.
